Traditionally, computing devices were designed to perform computations as quickly as possible given any hardware cost and design constraints that may have been applicable. More recently, however, computing devices are being designed to maximize, or minimize a number of aspects beyond merely their computational speed, including their power consumption, their electromagnetic signatures, their heat output and the like. To design such devices, measurements of various aspects or characteristics of the device can be taken to verify compliance with specifications, or to detect and diagnose potential design problems or inefficiencies. In some cases, those measurements may be taken by individual measurement devices or processes that, either due to design or due to more fundamental limitations, are not, or cannot be, synchronized with one another.
Such measurement synchronization problems likewise arise outside of the context of the computing device design arts. For example, many measurement devices, such as the ubiquitous oscilloscope, provide for “trigger” inputs through which one set of measurements can be triggered by, and thereby synchronized with, another set of measurements. However, in certain cases, such trigger inputs may not be practical to use, or may simply not be possible given various physical and mathematical limitations. For example, if the characteristics being measured change at a sufficient rate of speed, or are influenced by the measuring apparatus, it may not be possible to trigger one set of measurements from another. As another example, accurately measuring a particular characteristic may not be possible except from outside of the system or device being measured. Such limitations can arise in power measurements, where accurate measures of power consumed by a device can most readily be obtained from outside of the device itself. In such cases, it can be difficult to synchronize, or trigger, measurements taken from within the system or device with measurements taken from outside of the system or device, and vice-versa.